You can start by swapping out the meat frankfurters. A good hot dog is about the snap and the spicing, and on that score, Field Roast grain-based vegan hot dogs do the trick. A package is $5.50 to $7.50 at Whole Foods and veganstore.com.

Crisp, wheaty and malty, Beer Flats crackers can handily replace chips and are sturdy enough for dip or a slather of cheese. The crackers, which are actually made with beer, come in pilsner (light) and porter (dark), about $8 at Zabar’s and igourmet.com.

American Vintage, which has been turning out wine crackers for years, also has a new beer cracker. Flavored with chile and lime, it’s best for nibbling, $6 for a 4-ounce bag at Chelsea Market Baskets and savor-newyork.com.

Angry Orchard is the provocative name for hard ciders made by a subsidiary of Boston Beer, which produces the Samuel Adams line. The cider is made from French and Italian apples; slow fermentation, partly with oak chips, provides complexity. The crisp apple flavor is a tad sweeter than the traditional dry, and the apple-ginger delivers a shot of heat. They’re about $9 for a six-pack at Top Hops on the Lower East Side, and at some Whole Foods markets.

Photo

Credit Lisa Raymond

To See: From Great Writers, Words About Food
Barbara Bosch’s interest in food writing is of recent vintage, jump-started when she read M. F. K. Fisher. Now Ms. Bosch, the artistic director of a theater group called Jeux de Mots, has created Foodacts, 90 minutes of staged excerpts from works by Proust, Homer, Chaucer, Dickens, Langston Hughes and others who have expounded on food. Performances will run from Feb. 6 through 24 at the Lion Theater, 410 West 42nd Street. Tickets are $19.25 from Telecharge.com or (212) 239-6200.

To Ponder: Bocuse Deplores the Loss Of Classic French Dishes

“Did they tear down Notre Dame de Paris to build the Pompidou Center or replace the Mona Lisa with a Warhol poster?” The French master chef Paul Bocuse posed those questions in a December issue of Marianne magazine, a French weekly. And his answers, of course, were no. In the article, a profile of Mr. Bocuse written by Périco Légasse, the chef deplored the disappearance from the “French gastronomic landscape” of dishes like tournedos Rossini in truffle sauce, which he compared, in its pride and solemnity, to the chateau of Chambord. Such food, he said, is now considered fusty and archaic in the eyes of trendsetters whose creed is cutting edge above all. “On the artistic front, different styles and eras coexist,” he said. “But in cooking, when it comes to tradition, the slate is wiped clean.”

A version of this article appears in print on 01/30/2013, on page D3 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Front Burner.